


A Room of One's Friend

by WoolfCub



Category: A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, Cunnilingus, F/F, First Time, Literary References & Allusions, Reminiscing, Sharing a Bed, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 18:16:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10996302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WoolfCub/pseuds/WoolfCub
Summary: The whole world might have turned upside down!  The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally.Later that night, when Clarissa can't sleep, she creeps across the hall to Sally's room.the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!





	A Room of One's Friend

_Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women._ \- Virginia Woolf

A plaster ceiling; bleached alabaster, moulded with dead ivy and fossilised roses. Where were those stars that she and Sally had kissed under? There they were, pinned like butterflies behind the window panes; boxed in the whitewashed lathes and frames. There must be more stars overhead. Old Joseph, who read about astronomy and practised spotting the constellations by eye, said there were always stars overhead; even when the Sun’s glare obliterated them, they were there. A whole universe of stars and galaxies, so great that our finest telescopes (our telescopes, always, how very socialist) could not fathom its depths. Clarissa glanced to the corners of the room, and her universe was fathomed exactly. Earlier her heart had been spinning, her mind had been looping, all thanks to that one kiss beneath the stars. But the motion was gone, and Clarissa was left with the restlessness of cessation. She felt as if she were on an express train that, having torn through fields and towns, now sat at the signals, and would sit there forever.  
No. This was intolerable. She couldn’t sleep as long as that ceiling hung over her, taunting her. She sat up, cool air on her arms, and dropped down into her slippers. Floorboards creaked, and the whole array of toiletries on the nightstand jingled. The gown went on; she couldn’t let anyone see her in the passage in just her nightgown. Not like Sally, running naked to get her soap, no matter who saw her! Out into the hallway, just three steps, and she knocked on the door on the other side.  
“Who is it?”  
“Clarissa,” she hissed through the keyhole. “I couldn’t sleep.”  
Why had she thought she would sleep any better in Sally’s room? It escaped her now. She knew she would only find the same ceiling inside.  
“Well, come in. The door isn’t locked.”  
The knob roared as it turned, the bolt shot back like cannon fire, and the hinges creaked loud enough to bring down the roof, and yet somehow, the rest of the house remained asleep through this onslaught. There she was, Sally, head half-raised off the pillow, just a forest of hair blooming from the silk sheets; rubbing her eyes, stretching her legs under the blanket, smacking her lips together for whatever reason. Could those lips really have been on hers just a few hours ago? Clarissa would just as easily have believed that she’d kissed the Moon itself, so distant did they seem now.  
“Come, Clarissa, you must be cold.”  
A hand sprouted from the cover of the bed and a single ensnaring tendril of a finger unfurled. Clarissa hadn’t been cold, or she didn’t remember it, but suddenly she was shivering in her gown. Off it went, and the slippers too, and she lifted up the covers. A wave of bare skin! Curves and folds casting long round shadows in the starlight! Bushes and branches of hair glistening! The sheet slipped from her hand, and this time when it fell it became a sculpture of those shapes beneath.  
“I’m sorry!” Clarissa stammered, and a hundred other apologies besides. “I didn’t know you’d be...” The word trailed off. She couldn’t say naked, nor nude. The words were ash in her mouth. Hot ash. She had to spit them out.  
“It really is the most comfortable way to sleep. If you’re having trouble, you should try it.”  
She sat up fully, sheets slipping down like meltwater in spring, and patted the space next to her in the bed. Clarissa fumbled with the knot on her dressing gown, mumbling yeses and maybes; she couldn’t really take her eyes off Sally. There was nothing unexpected there, no devil tails, no witch’s nipple. Everything that she could see, she carried herself constantly. But the angle was different. That was the key, the angle was different. She saw her chest in the mirror when she strapped on her whalebone every morning, but always from the same angle. There was nothing interesting about the breast viewed straight on. But from above, from the side, with the nipples in chiaroscuro; compared to that perspective, all the sculptures in the British Museum were nothing. A field of blackness rushed across her face, and Clarissa realised she was removing her nightdress. What wouldn’t she do for Sally! She could make you do anything, she reflected, even slide naked as Lilith into another’s bed.  
“Come on. You’ll find it’s not nearly as bad as sharing a bed with a man.”  
Clarissa made herself laugh as she slid in. “I’ve never slept with a man. I’m sure you find that very quaint, with your Wollstonecraft and your Byron.”  
“No, no.” Arms closed around her. A very calming sensation; being caught in the trap you always intended to fall into. “It’s for the best. You don’t want to sleep with a man. They’re always jabbing you!” Bottles clattered on the nightstand; powders, ointments, perfumes; the click of a catch, the creak of a hinge, the rustle of wax paper, and then the smell of raw tobacco. Sally brought the unlit cigar under the covers and then suddenly thrust it against Clarissa’s lower back. “Jab, jab, jab! All night it’s like this. Or sometimes they grind it against you.” Sally’s body pressed deeply into Clarissa’s, and the cigar rolled back and forth on her backside. “That’s what it’s like. Of course, you don’t have to worry about that with me.”  
Sally leaned up to put the cigar back. A shape moved above, darkness against darkness. Clarissa reached up for it, pulled it in close, and the universe was an infinity of heat and the gentle prickling of skin on skin. Sally kissed her again! She kissed with her mouth and her hands and her chest and her legs, all driving against her.  
In the dark sensations lost their moorings, drifted through Clarissa’s body, collided in odd places; here an electric shock at the base of her neck, here a silky tickle down one forearm; a will-o-wisp of blue heat floated lazily down her and came to rest between (yes, we must say it) her legs. Sally deconstructed; ten roaming fingers skittered on deep zephyrs of warm breath, fronds of hair came down over Clarissa like fog, a tongue. Oh yes, a tongue. In a place that Clarissa didn’t even dare name to herself. The darkness became blacker and lighter; a perfect sea of tar set everywhere with diamonds and pearls of scorching light that blinded her through clenched eyelids. She was under the stars once again. What a night! What a dream! What an impossibility!  
Clarissa put down her glimmering star-shaped brooch and looked in the mirror. It didn’t go with this dress, unfortunately. It would have to wait for another occasion. And she couldn’t sit all afternoon with her silly memories either. There was a party to organise. And Sally would be there.


End file.
